Beggar of Love Read Online Free Page A

having education.
    After the kiss, Jefferson withdrew her hands from Angela’s, but continued to hold her. She wanted Angela, half a foot shorter than her, to feel cherished. With the festival at high pitch around them and her heart pressed to Angela, she believed with her whole pleased and uproariously beating heart that the world—her team—was celebrating the first spring of forever with her Angela.

Chapter Four

    Once, when Jefferson’s father was shaving in his bathroom, he let her stand on the toilet seat next to the sink and lather shaving cream on her little-girl cheeks. He kept the razor to himself so she lost interest and watched him until he used a washcloth to clean the foamy stuff off her face. He used his index finger inside the washcloth lightly, as if it was his shaver slicing through the cream. It tickled. She laughed so much he couldn’t finish and gave her the cloth to get the last bits. It was fun, but after that he always kept the bathroom door shut when he shaved, and she couldn’t reach his shaving cream up in the medicine cabinet. Now and then, though, for the rest of her life, she would rub her jaw as if feeling for whiskers, like her father did.
    Sometimes, both in Dutchess and in the city, she sat on the floor next to Emmy’s vanity while Emmy, on an upholstered stool, put on makeup. There was a small rug in the Dutchess house, with a raised flower pattern, green on green, with little yellow and light blue specks. She would settle on it and sometimes trace the outlines of the flowers, sometimes run her hand up and down the smooth round pieces of the vanity’s legs while she watched her mother.
    The best part was the little things Emmy used. The eyebrow pencil was red and had a sharpener, and Emmy left red and tan peels on the low-down part where everything was laid out. The vanity had little wooden beads along the front and four deep drawers Jefferson wasn’t allowed to open. Emmy used a shiny thing to curl her eyelashes up and then a tiny brush that made them dark. She scraped the brush on a pad in a red holder as little as a matchbook. There was powder too, in a round marshmallow-colored box. The pink powder puff sent up smoke signals as Emmy patted it into the white stuff.
    When Emmy was finished, Amelia collected the pencil shavings and sniffed them. They smelled better than the powder and perfume. The perfume was named Prince Matchabelly, Emmy said. Emmy got up and stood in her black silky slip. She was very pretty. Her cheeks were all pink then and her eyes were dark. She smiled at Jefferson like a mother in a Golden Book. Her hair was up in the back. She looked like a movie star. Amelia felt heat fill the bedroom. They were going to a party at her father’s work. “I hope there’s dancing,” said Emmy, stepping into high heels, her hand, with red fingernails, on Amelia’s father’s shoulder to keep from falling over.
    The wood shavings curled around Amelia’s fingers and fell to the floor. She bent over and picked them up again. Emmy turned her back to Amelia’s father and he zipped up her slinky dress. Amelia went back to the vanity and climbed on Emmy’s vanity stool. She picked up the eyebrow pencil and drew a mustache over her lips. Her father’s mustache was neater. Emmy slipped the pencil from between her small fingers and placed it in a drawer, then put away the Maybelline and moved the powder and perfume out of reach. Jarvy picked up the lipstick and dabbed a little on Amelia’s lips, then, with great care, applied it to Emmy’s lips.
    Amelia looked in the mirror. She had a mustache and lipstick! She laughed and showed her face to Emmy, who didn’t look, then to her father, who was putting on his black shiny shoes. She ran her tongue along her lower lip. The lipstick tasted like a candle. Emmy folded a tissue and popped her lips up and down on it—Amelia could hear the little popping sound like Emmy was kissing the tissue—until there was a red mark on the